


Gavotte

by bunnyfication



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Dancing, Jealousy, M/M, Victorian, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-05
Updated: 2009-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 00:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyfication/pseuds/bunnyfication
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley sleeps a decade or a few, and suddenly Aziraphale is dressing fashionably? And asking him to a dance at a club with a "select clientele"? Clearly something is amiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gavotte

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a friend's birthday.
> 
> Graciously betaed by [](http://theskywasblue.livejournal.com/profile)[**theskywasblue**](http://theskywasblue.livejournal.com/) , thank you a lot. ♥ And also to [](http://taiyou-to-tsuki.livejournal.com/profile)[**taiyou_to_tsuki**](http://taiyou-to-tsuki.livejournal.com/) who looked up the quote, because I've foolishly borrowed my copy elsewhere. Good save! :'D

Someone was knocking at the door, the sound muffled but distinct. Two knocks, and then five minutes of silence before whoever it was tried again. And again. There was only one person in the world who could make the simple action of knocking sound that prim.

The slumbering figure on the bed turned first to one side, then the other, and finally sat up, blinking his yellow eyes.

After an inhumanly wide yawn, he parted most reluctantly from his bed, and stumbled through the apartment, raising small puffs of dust as he went. The figure cursed as one floor plank gave away under his foot. He glared at the treacherous wood, and the plank pieced itself back together guiltily.

Eventually he reached the door, and Crowley could glare at the man shaped being on the other side.

"What is it now?" he croaked in a voice rough from disuse.

Aziraphale blinked, and adjusted the flower on his lapel self-consciously.

"You're awake! I mean to say, I was simply...checking up on you. Really Crowley, do you have any idea what year it is?"

"No."

"1880. Surely you must have conducted enough sloth for a while."

Crowley huffed, but found he was really feeling quite rested.

"Well, I don't suppose I'll get back to sleep now you've woken me up," he grouched anyway.

Then he gave a long look at the angel's attire. Didn't seem that different from what he remembered, but then again that didn't mean much...Crowley doubled back to peek through the curtains at the people going by on the street. For once it seemed Aziraphale was dressed quite fashionably, who would have thought?

When Crowley returned to the door, he was tugging at the lapels of his own suit coat. He raised an eyebrow at Aziraphale, who was staring rather dumbly.

"Well, where are we going then?"

*

To _"A rather nice gentlemen's club on Portland Place, some friend of mine introduced me to it."_ , apparently. Friends? Since when did Aziraphale have friends?

"Are you sure it's here?" Crowley asked dubiously as the angel led him to building that looked more like an upscale apartment building, the kind where piano playing was frowned on after seven pm.

"Oh yes. It's simply that they have a very select clientele. Which reminds me, you should pin this on your lapel."

Crowley frowned down at the flower. What an odd color.

"It clashes with my tie," he complained.

Aziraphale sighed and gave him a longsuffering look, as if to say they both knew he was being ridiculous. Not that Crowley knew any such thing.

Aziraphale clearly wasn't joking about the "select clientele." For whatever's sake, they practically had to give code words to the blank faced employee who opened the door.

Even the hall of the building looked like that of an ordinary house; it was only after they passed through one of the doors and came to a large and airy, if somewhat dimly lit room that things started looking more familiar.

Granted, it seemed like a pleasant place, but unless things had changed drastically in the last hundred years...well, something illegal, if not immoral, was going on here, Crowley could swear on it. He could sense these things.

He looked towards Aziraphale, but the angel was busy beaming and greeting someone at the nearby table. Crowley was introduced vaguely as _"an old friend who just returned from abroad"_ to a few people, but he was mostly busy trying to figure out exactly what breed of fishy business was conducted here.

The one man who looked at Crowley rather like Aziraphale looked at the last pastry on the plate was a tad unsettling. From Aziraphale's manner Crowley deduced the angel didn't much care for him either though.

It was around the time they'd eaten a passable if expensive meal and the dancing started that Crowley pinned down one slightly peculiar detail.

"There don't seem to be any women here, eh?"

Aziraphale shrugged and smiled.

"It is a gentlemen's club, after all. Besides, with the dancing and all...it might seem a bit, ah, improper."

He might have blushed slightly towards the end, but it was hard to say in the lightning. Or it might have been just the wine. Aziraphale looked towards the dancing people, his foot tapping, though he stopped that when he noticed Crowley staring at it.

When the music stopped, and the next dance was announced, the angel almost literally brightened up. He stood up and beamed at Crowley in a rather startling manner.

"Come Crowley, you must try this."

"What? Dancing? Angels don't dance."

Aziraphale frowned at him.

"Don't be a spoilsport."

"I don't even know how to dance...whatever it is."

" _Gavotte._ And it's really quite simple, I'm sure you'll learn it in a moment."

Gavotte, Crowley was appalled to discover, involved a lot of completely undignified skipping and jumping. In a _circle_ , bless it. And that wasn't the worst of it either.

"Aziraphale," Crowley hissed as the first pair of dancers concluded their solo piece, "did kissing as a greeting come back into fashion any time recently?"

"Ah, well, not really, but this is an old dance...and also originally French, I believe..."

It struck Crowley then:, the secrecy and lack women, and most damningly, that one man with the shark like look...but surely even Aziraphale couldn't be that oblivious? Could he?

He looked at the angel's happy, innocent face, clearly looking forward to his chance to humiliate himself (well, admittedly less so than Crowley, considering the angel actually knew his blessed steps) on the middle of the floor.

"Really Crowley, don't look so shocked. Like I said, it's not as if there are any women here, so it's not a problem, is it?"

Crowley would have to take a closer look at these so- called friends of his, it wouldn't do to...well, it would be just too embarrassing if his old adversary tripped and fell for some pesky mortal.

Not to say he was worried or anything.

*

As they ended their solo dance, and Aziraphale bent forward to kiss his (somewhat flushed) demonical counterpart, he thought that it was really almost...endearing, how Crowley could think him so gullible, after all these years.

Not as if he had particularly changed in the last hundred years. Much.

**Author's Note:**

> In Good Omens, it's written that angels don't dance, however in the case of one particular Principality Aziraphale: _"Aziraphale had learned to[gavotte](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/227348/gavotte) in a discreet gentlemen's club in Portland Place, in the late 1880s."_ He was reportedly quite sad when it went out of fashion a short while later.
> 
> There are of course newer and more...formal versions of the dance, but here's [a video of people dancing the folk version.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aiaq_dFpviM)
> 
> I was momentarily dismayed to recall Crowley canonically slept through the 19th century...but what's a few decades when a character is immortal, eh? >3>


End file.
